Operations Director of the National Security Branch at the Federal Bureau of Investigation Michael Glasheen testifies before the House Committee on Homeland Security on December 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“Just a complete admission here that the entire ‘antifa’ threat narrative is totally manufactured by this administration,” said one critic.
A top FBI official struggled on Thursday to answer basic questions about antifa, a loosely organized collective of anti-fascist activists that he labeled the top terrorist threat facing the US.
Michael Glasheen, operations director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, testified before the US House Committee on Homeland Security that antifa was “the most immediate violent threat” facing Americans today when it comes to domestic terrorism.
But when Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, asked Glasheen for specifics about this purportedly dire threat, he mostly came up empty.
“So where is antifa headquarters?” Thompson asked him.
Glasheen paused for several seconds and then said, “What we’re doing right now with the organization…” before Thompson interrupted him.
“Where in the United States does antifa exist?” asked Thompson.
“We are building out the infrastructure right now,” Glasheen replied.
“So what does that mean?” asked a bewildered Thompson. “I’m just, we’re trying to get information. You said antifa is a terrorist organization. Tell us, as a committee, how did you come to that? Whether they exist, how many members do they have in the United States as of right now?”
“Well, that’s very fluid,” Glasheen said. “It’s ongoing for us to understand that… no different from al-Qaeda and ISIS.”
Thompson again interrupted and tried to make Glasheen answer his original question.
“If you said antifa is the No. 1 domestic terrorist organization operating in the United States,” he said, “I just need to know where they are, how many people. I don’t want a name, I don’t want anything like that. Just, how many people have you identified, with the FBI, that antifa is made of?”
“Well, the investigations are active…” Glasheen said.
Thompson then became incredulous.
“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”
GLASHEEN: Antifa is our primary concern right now. That's the most immediate violent threat we're facing
BENNIE THOMPSON: Where is antifa headquartered?
GLASHEEN: … … … we are building out the infrastructure right now
Many observers were stunned that Glasheen appeared to know so little about what he proclaimed to be the top domestic terrorist threat facing the US.
“Total amateur hour in US law enforcement,” remarkedDemocracy Docket news editor Matthew Kupfer, “where the No. 1 terror threat is an organization that does not formally exist and a career FBI official is dancing around before a congressional committee trying to make the Trump strategy sound legit.”
Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan argued that Glasheen’s testimony was proof that the administration was simply concocting domestic terrorism threats with zero basis in reality.
“Wow,” Hasan marveled. “Just a complete admission here that the entire ‘antifa’ threat narrative is totally manufactured by this administration.”
Fred Wellman, a Democratic congressional candidate in Missouri, wondered how many actual dangerous criminals are running free while the FBI focuses on taking down an organization that it apparently knows nothing about.
“This would be comical if there wasn’t real world impact from this idiocy,” Wellman wrote. “We have real crimes and real threats and they are chasing a fake ‘organization’ for politics.”
Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee also piled on Glasheen, citing his testimony as evidence that the Trump administration is completely unserious about law enforcement.
“If your ‘top threat’ has no headquarters, no organization, and no definition then it’s not a top threat,” they posted on social media. “The Trump administration is ignoring real threats, and the American people see right through it.”
“We stick together – Antifa on the offensive!” reads a banner at a demonstration on June 14, 2025, in Jena, Thuringia, Germany, called by a broad alliance of anti-fascist groups under the slogan “Now more than ever! Anti-fascism is necessary!”. (Photo by Daniel Vogl/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein warns that the designation opens up US citizens to government surveillance, asset seizure, and material support charges.
President Donald Trump’s State Department on Thursday broadened his efforts to use “terrorism” to crush his enemies on the left, designating four European groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” based on their alleged connections to the vaguely defined network of leftist agitators known as “antifa,” short for “anti-fascist.”
Following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in September, Trump turned his attention toward waging a war on left-wing protest groups and liberal nonprofits, describing them as part of a vast, interconnected web that was fomenting “terrorism,” primarily through First Amendment-protected speech.
As part of that effort, Trump formally designated “antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization,” even though it is not a formal group with any structure, but rather, a loose confederation of individuals all expressing an amorphous political belief. Civil rights advocates warned that the vague nature of the designation could be extended to bring terrorism charges against anyone who describes the Trump administration’s actions as fascist or authoritarian.
Shortly after, Trump also signed a little-reported national security order, known as National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which mandated a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
Some of the indicators of potential violence, the memo said, were “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
Referencing NSPM-7 explicitly, the State Department on Thursday spread that crusade against the left overseas, slapping four German, Greek, and Italian anarchist groups with the label of “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO). The same designation has been given to groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS, and al-Shabaab.
Trump slaps Antifa with its first-ever foreign terror label, in move that explicitly cites NSPM-7. https://t.co/NIeWFNv1PZ
The groups targeted were Antifa Ost in Germany; the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI) in Italy; Armed Proletarian Justice in Greece; and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, also in Greece.
The designation of Antifa Ost and other violent Antifa groups supports President Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, an initiative to disrupt self-described ‘anti-fascism’ networks, entities, and organizations that use political violence and terroristic acts to undermine democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental liberties.
Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, ‘anti-capitalism,’ and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas.
Each of the accused groups has had members charged with or convicted of violence, often against Neo-Nazis or adjacent far-right causes. But while they are more organized than America’s anti-fascist movement, they are still broad-based and diffuse.
Mirroring what studies have shown in the US, the far-right is responsible for the overwhelming bulk of political violence in the European Union. A 2024 study by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) found that across Europe, the far-right was responsible for 85% of the violent targeted incidents they tracked.
Though Greece was one exception, where far-left violence was more prevalent than far-right violence, Mary Bossis, an emeritus professor of international security at Piraeus University in Athens, told The Guardianthat Greece’s anti-fascist movement has little to do with it.
“It is highly exaggerated to say that the antifa movement in Greece employs terror tactics,” she said. “They even run in elections and have never shown any sign of violence.”
While most social movements have some violent adherents, Bossis said, “that does not mean, as in the case of antifa, that the whole movement is either violent or supportive of terrorism. In fact, it is very much not the case… Standing against fascism does not make someone a terrorist.”
As Mark Bray, a Rutgers University professor who teaches a course on the history of antifascism, pointed out in The Guardian, Antifa Ost is the only one of the four groups designated by Trump that self-identifies as anti-fascist.
“The others are revolutionary groups,” he said. “This shows how the Trump administration is trying to lump all revolutionary and radical groups together under the label ‘antifa’. By establishing the (alleged) existence of foreign antifa groups, the Trump administration seems to be setting the stage for declaring American antifa groups (and all that they deem to be ‘antifa’) to be affiliated with these supposed foreign terrorist groups.”
Ken Klippenstein, an independent investigative journalist who has warned about NSPM-7 since its release, noted that this marks the first time that an entity in any of these three European countries has ever been slapped with the label of an FTO.
“The move seems an attempt to make people accustomed to white Westerners being treated as terrorists,” he wrote Thursday. “That, after all, is the goal of Trump’s national security directive NSPM-7.”
While there is no law on the books to back Trump’s designation of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, there is such a designation for foreign terrorist groups.
Being designated as a member of a foreign terrorist organization can subject one to significant sanctions, including having assets in American banks frozen, being unable to enter the country, or being prosecuted for “material support.”
The government has used accusations of terrorism to go much farther, including carrying out extrajudicial assassinations of targets. Over the past two months, the Trump administration has bombed over a dozen boats in the Caribbean using the unsubstantiated justification that their passengers are “narco-terrorists” shipping drugs for cartels, which the administration has also designated as FTOs. The attacks have killed at least 76 people.
Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested last month that the Trump administration planned to use the “same approach” to antifa as it has with cartels, leading many to fear that might include assassinations.
Mehdi Hasan, the founder of the media outlet Zeteo, said the designation of these groups as terrorist organizations was “super bad for US citizens, especially on the left of the spectrum,” because it “gives this authoritarian administration potentially the power to surveil and go after US citizens on spurious ‘funding of FTO’ grounds.”
The State Department noted in a fact sheet on the designations that it is also seeking to target those in the US accused of supporting these groups.
“US persons are generally prohibited from conducting business with sanctioned persons. It is also a crime to knowingly provide material support or resources to those designated, or to attempt or conspire to do so,” the memo said. “Persons that engage in certain transactions or activities with those designated today may expose themselves to sanctions risk. Notably, engaging in certain transactions with them entails risk of secondary sanctions pursuant to counterterrorism authorities.”
Klippenstein said that while Trump’s “domestic terrorist” designation was limited, “with an FTO designation, the gloves come off,” opening Americans up to “FISA surveillance, seizure of financial assets, [and] material support charges.”
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As more and more US cities face the prospect of federal police and military patrolling their streets, the New York Times (10/10/25) began a recent article on the fight over sending National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, with the following passage:
Democratic leaders in the city and state have pleaded with President Trump and the courts to trust law enforcement records, both local and federal, that describe the demonstrations as small and comparatively calm.
But in the bifurcated media world of 2025, one side’s comparative calm is the other’s “hellscape.”
By “both-sidesing” its description of the protests in Portland, the Times fails to inform its readers that one of these descriptions is true and the other is simply fabricated. Instead, it tells readers the situation reflects “dueling versions of reality.”
Compare this to Michael Tomasky’s reporting in the New Republic (10/13/25), which aptly notes in the kicker that “the disturbances in Portland are basically limited to a single block about two miles from the city center.”
Or the snarky factcheck website Is Portland Burning? which shows images of the serene city and video of a calm, small protest.
Elsewhere, the Times (10/11/25) has written about the funny animal costumes worn by protesters in Portland, reporting that could have been used to debunk MAGA claims that the city is a “hellscape.”
‘Both officials disagree’
Taking a “closer look” at Trump’s claim that “in Portland, Oregon, antifa thugs have repeatedly attacked our offices and laid siege to federal property in an attempt to violently stop the execution of federal law,” AP (via Washington Post, 10/9/25) began its response, “There have been nightly protests outside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland for months, peaking in June when police declared one demonstration a riot.”
In an Associated Press factchecking piece (reprinted in the Washington Post, 10/9/25), promising to take “a closer look at the facts” about Portland, only one of Trump’s claims (that in Portland, “you don’t even have sewers anymore”) is met with a forthright “this is false.” Other times, the AP struggles to find a kernel of truth in the Trump administration’s bizarre claims:
TRUMP: “The amazing thing is, you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights, and I mean just violence. It’s just so crazy. And then you talk to the governor and she acts like everything is totally normal, there’s nothing wrong.”
THE FACTS: Fires outside the building have been seen on a handful of occasions.
Or, like the Times, it resorts to both-sidesing it:
KRISTI NOEM, Homeland Security Secretary: “I was in Portland yesterday and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon, and also the mayor there in town, and they are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.”
THE FACTS: Noem did visit Portland on Tuesday and met with Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson. Both officials disagree with Noem’s narrative.
These failings by the media leave the reader or viewer at the mercy of what are posed as competing narratives, rather than with an understanding of what’s real and what’s fake. This is particularly important now, given that right-wing influencers and media are ginning up false claims for the administration to consume and rebroadcast, and even instigating real incidents (Oregon Public Broadcasting, 10/11/25).
When corporate media refuse to call a lie a lie, and to stand unequivocally on the side of reality, they enable the Trump administration’s growing authoritarianism. If Trump can claim that a major US city is “burning to the ground,” what’s to stop him from asserting that the Constitution allows him to run for a third term—or that, once again, he’s won an election that he actually lost?
Featured Image: Detail from New York Times photo (10/11/25) of Portland protests (photo: Jordan Gale).
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Demonstrators in Chicago on October 8 (Photo: Saja Bilasan)
“The oath we took as soldiers absolutely comes with an asterisk, and this is it,”: Veteran activists in Portland urge National Guard Troops to defy Trump’s orders
A US federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on October 9, blocking the Trump administration’s deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops to Chicago. Hundreds were already stationed in the midwestern city at the time of this ruling. This comes days after a separate judge blocked the deployment of the National Guard to Portland, Oregon.
Currently, there are around 500 National Guard troops in the greater Chicago area, 2,400 in Washington, DC, and 100 still in Los Angeles down from a peak of 4,700 in June.
With the support of the Governor of Tennessee, the state’s National Guard troops are set to begin patrolling the city of Memphis. Unlike Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, Tennessee’s Republican governor Bill Lee is supportive of Trump’s federal takeover efforts and therefore is sending troops from his own state to Memphis – thus eliminating the legal obstacles Trump has faced in other states.
Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson called the judge’s order a “win for the people of Chicago and the rule of law.” The previous day, Trump called for the jailing of both Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker for “failing to protect Ice Officers”. But Johnson asserted that, as protests against violent ICE raids continue in Chicago, that there is “no rebellion,” there are “just good people standing up for what is right.”
Federal troops blocked in Portland
Trump announced the deployment of federal troops to Portland on September 27, characterizing the West Coast city as “war ravaged” and claiming that ICE facilities were under attack by “Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”
According to federal judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, there is “substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days – or even weeks – leading up to the President’s directive ordering the deployment of troops to Oregon.”
Top Trump adviser Stephen Miller described Immergut’s ruling as a “legal insurrection.”
On September 22, Trump announced that he was declaring “Antifa” a domestic terrorist organization, despite the fact that Antifa is a decentralized movement with no central organization attached.
Amid attempts by the Trump administration to militarize the city, Portland residents have continued to protest. Demonstrations continued against ICE, including a march to the ICE facility in Portland in the early afternoon of Saturday, October 4 – which was attacked by federal agents deploying tear gas, smoke canisters, and pepper balls at protesters. Protesters outside the ICE facility also experienced similar brutal crowd control tactics by federal agents once again that evening – including tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and pepper balls – despite no clear provocation by demonstrators.
Portland veterans urge National Guard members to disobey
On October 6, dozens of veterans, some with anti-war veteran group About Face, held a press conference, with some speakers and signage urging National Guard members to disobey Trump’s orders. Several signs read “Trump is the real enemy within,” referencing the President’s previous statements claiming that he is sending troops to so-called “Democrat-run” cities to protect from “invasion from within”. Other signs read: “Veterans say: Duty to disobey”, “No war in Portland”, and “Guard, go home.”
“Trump is signaling in very clear terms he wants to go to war in American cities,” said Portland City Councilor Mitch Green, an Army veteran who served in the US invasion of Afghanistan, at the press conference. “He said he wants to use Portland as a training ground and that soldiers should do ‘whatever they want’ to protesters. While it’s unclear what the role of the National Guard will be, these threats are as serious as anything in American history. The oath we took as soldiers absolutely comes with an asterisk, and this is it.”
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US President Donald Trump reads a note as Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a roundtable discussion at the White House in Washington, DC on October 8, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
US Attorney General Pam Bondi generated alarm on Wednesday when she said the Trump administration is going to take the “same approach” to Antifa as it has to drug cartels—as the military bombs boats in the Caribbean it claims are smuggling drugs.
Antifa encompasses autonomous anti-fascist individuals and loosely affiliated groups who lack a national organizational structure or leadership. Still, as the increasingly authoritarian administration works to quash dissent on all fronts, President Donald Trump last month signed an executive order designating the Antifa movement as a domestic terrorist organization.
During a related roundtable on Wednesday—held as the administration worked to deploy the National Guard in Democrat-led cities—Bondi said that “we’re not gonna stop at just arresting the violent criminals we can see in the streets. Fighting crime is more than just getting the bad guy off the streets; it’s breaking down the organization brick by brick, just like we did with cartels.”
Glancing toward Trump, she continued: “We’re going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa: Destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We’re going to take them apart. Thanks to your bold leadership, and the designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization—which is exactly what they are—Americans will no longer tolerate their unhinged violence.”
Lawyer and radio host Dean Obeidallah warned: “Please understand that this is Trump regime explaining how they will use the government to prosecute Democrats. Page 1 of the fascist playbook is imprison political opponents so that the fascist has one-party rule.”
Others noted the violence the administration has already taken. Zeteo reporter Prem Thakker said: “My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly ‘carrying drugs,’ the US attorney general says, ‘Just like we did with cartels, we’re going to take the same approach…with Antifa.’”
Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan said, “So he is going to drone strike American citizens?”
HuffPost‘s SV Dáte similarly asked, “So the US military will be summarily killing them from above now?”
Trump has recently announced four bombings of boats he claimed were running drugs, without releasing any evidence. Those US military attacks have killed at least 21 people. Critics in Congress and beyond argue the strikes are illegal under federal and international law.
On Tuesday, top Democrats from key committees in the US House of Representatives demanded further information about the bombings and reminded Trump: “Congress has the sole constitutional responsibility to declare war and to authorize the use of force. You have failed to secure such authorization for these strikes.”
Also on Tuesday, Bondi appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers grilled her on a range of topics. Asked about legal justification for the boat bombings by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), she declined to comment.
COONS: How did you conclude that these strikes on boats in the open ocean are legal?
BONDI: I'm not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may or may not have issued pic.twitter.com/Lg1FNPBpk7
Ahead of Bondi’s Senate testimony, watchdog groups and hundreds of former employees of the US Department of Justice expressed alarm about her leadership of the DOJ.
“We’re seeing the erosion of the Justice Department’s fabric and integrity at an alarming pace,“ says a letter signed by 282 former DOJ officials. ”Our democratic system cannot survive without the primary institution that enforces the law.”
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